imports??? whats your thought?

[rabernet]

This is pretty much what I gathered from reading about people importing ball pythons. The people over there who are catching these ball pythons and bagging them know all too well what is what. They know when they've caught something completely different. They WILL hold those back and sell them to a breeder who will try to prove them out for big money.

All the BPs in the bags that you buy will be dinkers at most. If you're luck, they will carry some hidden gene that blends with mojave, fire, or yellowbelly lolol.

There WAS a time, when the ball python craze was in its infancy that you could get pretty cool stuff in the yearly imports - that's how Kevin first discovered hypo's. Lots of breeders didn't want anything to do with pieds, because they thought that they were sick, that the white was some sort of skin problem. It wasn't until Pete Kahl proved them out that the real value was realized.

Once the exporters caught on, they learned quickly what the big breeders were willing to pay top dollar for.

[h00blah]

There WAS a time, when the ball python craze was in its infancy that you could get pretty cool stuff in the yearly imports - that's how Kevin first discovered hypo's. Lots of breeders didn't want anything to do with pieds, because they thought that they were sick, that the white was some sort of skin problem. It wasn't until Pete Kahl proved them out that the real value was realized.

Once the exporters caught on, they learned quickly what the big breeders were willing to pay top dollar for.

Lots of people want to, but the political unrest makes it unsafe to do so. And it's a very tight community over there, they're not going to let some American come traipsing through their land and take food away from their family (by finding the cool stuff before they do).

Things are different nowadays... As you said, the exporters caught on and they know now that breeders want the special stuff. Anything different. So the best you'll get out of a bag of normals, is probably a dinker, or as I stated, "if you're lucky", maybe you'll get one of those random hidden genes that just so happen to lock up with one of the genes already in existence, and make something fantastical! Like the highway ball, or the superstripe!